There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says the agency will weed out illegal immigrants from programs her department operates, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called food stamps.
“At @POTUS’ direction we will be reviewing ALL @USDA PROGRAMS to ensure only legal citizens are receiving benefits,” Rollins posted on social media platform X.
“Earlier this year, USDA put states on notice reminding them illegal immigrants and certain non-citizens CAN NOT receive SNAP benefits. Right now, we are requiring states turn over recipient data to fight waste, fraud, and abuse,” she wrote.
At @POTUS’ direction we will be reviewing ALL @USDA PROGRAMS to ensure only legal citizens are receiving benefits.
Earlier this year, USDA put states on notice reminding them illegal immigrants and certain non-citizens CAN NOT receive SNAP benefits.
“Even though 22 blue states have refused to provide the data, we are using every tool to compel their compliance. WHAT are they hiding? WHO are they hiding? Thank you, President Trump, for putting Americans first!” she wrote.
She said more than 500,000 people were found to have been taking SNAP benefits twice in a limited response from states that shared data with the USDA.
While focusing on fraud, the USDA is also changing the rules to reduce the number of people on SNAP.
Monday marked the day a provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act took effect, raising from 54 to 64 the age of people required to engage in “qualifying” work or other activities at least 80 hours a month to get their benefits. The new rule kicks in when individuals reapply or apply for SNAP, according to Fox Business.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated the rule change will reduce SNAP rolls by about 2.4 million people in the next 10 years.
Rollins has said that the debate over SNAP in the recent government shutdown “has given us a platform to completely deconstruct the program,” according to NPR.
In a Fox Business interview last month, Rollins said SNAP changes in the pipeline will “make sure those vulnerable Americans who really need that benefit are going to get it. And for all the rest of the fraudsters and the people who are corrupt and taking advantage of it — we’re going to protect the taxpayer, too.”
Rollins has said that she wants all SNAP recipients to reapply. A USDA representative said existing recertifications of SNAP recipients will be the teeth of that philosophy.
“Secretary Rollins wants to ensure the fraud, waste, and incessant abuse of SNAP ends. Rates of fraud were only previously assumed, and President Trump is doing something about it,” a USDA representative said.
“Using standard recertification processes for households is a part of that work. As well as ongoing analysis of state data, further regulatory work, and improved collaboration with states,” the representative said.
The USDA learned that “186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check,” Rollins said in a Newsmax interview.
“Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data what we’re going to find?” she said.
That might take some time. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia are fighting the Trump administration on multiple fronts over SNAP and have recently sued the Trump administration over new limits on immigrants’ eligibility for SNAP, according to Politico.
“President Trump was elected with a resounding mandate to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government — which includes ensuring that illegal aliens are not receiving benefits intended for American citizens,” White House representative Anna Kelly said.
If there’s any good that’s come from the government shutdown, it’s exposing all the fraud being committed to exploit the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
To be sure, there are millions of needy Americans who were hurting from being deprived of SNAP as they tried to support children and keep their families from going hungry. This is not about them. This is about the other people — the individuals who dip into this program unjustly at the expense of the taxpayer.
Just the News reported that Department of Agriculture Deputy Secretary Steven Vaden has indicated his agency is engaging in data collection relating to SNAP across several states to see where funds for the program are going.
So far, what he’s uncovered is not promising.
Vaden cited an instance of one individual getting SNAP in six separate states.
Another person had over $50,000 loaded onto their electronic benefits card.
EBT cards work like credit cards for anyone getting government assistance, with funds rolling over to the following month.
Clearly something is amiss.
As Vaden put it, “The taxpayers have a right to know what is being done with their money and that, when we have appropriations, we are spending more than nine billion a month.”
On the case of a $50,000 card, Vaden clarified, “[Taxpayers] especially have a right to rest assured that only those who truly need are benefitting from the program, because every dollar you give to someone who has a balance of more than $15,000 on their EBT card cannot go to someone who is truly in need.”
SNAP fraud gets worse when considering recent comments by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on “The Ingraham Angle.”
Over 500,000 people were found to have been taking SNAP benefits twice, with 5,000 dead people receiving it.
INSANE: Sec. Brooke Rollins reveals 500,000 people are receiving SNAP benefits two times under the same name, and 5,000 dead people are still on the program.
She says a massive announcement is coming next week on the plan to crack down on this scandal.
The uncomfortable truth is that this fraud has to go deeper.
If the Trump administration is truly concerned about saving the American people money, they’ve got to make the appropriate reductions, and that includes SNAP.
Democrats’ rhetoric around this issue boiled down to Trump and Republicans letting millions of needy people starve.
Putting aside that the recent shutdown was perpetuated by that party, recent findings fly in the face of that narrative.
We are less than two weeks into the month of November, and the mainstream media is telling us that millions of Americans are “starving”. If our society is this vulnerable to a temporary disruption in food stamp benefits, what is it going to be like when global events really start hitting the fan and there is no food in our grocery stores at all? Much of the population is just a few missed meals away from going completely haywire. For now, at least those that have not received their food stamp benefits this month can rely on local food banks. But would you be willing to line up at 2:30 in the morning just to get some free food? That is precisely what just happened in the Bronx…
In the Bronx, throngs of desperate locals lined up as early as 2:30 a.m. at food banks because of disruptions in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance benefits caused by the shutdown.
Carmen Verona told The Post she was there for the time ever because her mom and brother had their benefits cut. Her own $459 monthly SNAP benefits aren’t enough.
“Without the food stamps, it’s a lot … and that’s not even enough because I always got to put out of pocket like $200, $300 because it’s too expensive,” said Verona, 58, as she picked up fruit, vegetables, and apple juice.
The reason why people line up so early is because there might not be enough food for everyone.
In Indianapolis, one elderly woman that thought that she had gotten in line at her local food bank early enough ended up leaving empty-handed…
On Saturday morning, bundled in a coat, hat and gloves, Alicia Engel waited in a line outside Fountain Square Church of Christ for a cart of free groceries. An hour before the city-sponsored event was scheduled to end, volunteers ran out of food — and Engel left empty-handed.
This is how badly our economy has deteriorated.
If the food stamp program permanently disappeared, millions upon millions of desperate Americans would suddenly be absolutely destitute.
At one food bank in Cleveland, hordes of hungry people lined up in the rain to get some free food. When Fox News posted footage of the line on X, it got hundreds of thousands of views…
A video of a large line outside a food bank in Cleveland has gone viral amid the ongoing freezing of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) during the government shutdown.
Fox News posted footage showing long lines of people queuing outside a food bank on its X account. At the time of writing, the video had accrued 599,000 views.
You have to be really committed to stand in the rain for hours.
In other parts of the country, people are able to wait in their vehicles. For example, on one recent morning in Tallahassee “hundreds of cars lined up outside a shopping mall for emergency food assistance”…
On a cold Saturday morning in Tallahassee, hundreds of cars lined up outside a shopping mall for emergency food assistance. Among them was Joe Elliott, a newly retired man with liver disease, whose rising medical costs and lapsed SNAP benefits left him in need, per Chronicle Online.
The food distribution, organized by Second Harvest and supported by United Way of the Big Bend and WTXL, aimed to serve 1,500 families. CEO Monique Ellsworth said calls for help have surged as nearly 100,000 residents in the region face uncertainty over food aid.
Within its service area of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, more than 168,000 people rely on CalFresh, the state of California’s version of SNAP, Bacho says.
On Monday alone, over 1,500 unique users visited the bank’s online food locator tool, which connects people to nearby food distribution sites, according to Bacho. That’s nearly double the usual volume.
Their hotline has also experienced a 200% increase in requests for referrals, she says.
I was surprised to learn that California is not even among the top 10 states that are most heavily dependent on the food stamp program.
It turns out that New Mexico, Oregon and Louisiana lead that list…
New Mexico -21.5 percent
Oregon – 18.1 percent
Louisiana – 17.5 percent
Oklahoma – 16.9 percent
W. Virginia – 15.5 percent
Nevada – 15.2 percent
Massachusetts – 15.1 percent
Pennsylvania – 15.0 percent
New York – 14.9 percent
Illinois – 14.8 percent
There were a few states that began paying out full food stamp benefits last week, but the Trump administration is ordering those states to “immediately undo” what they have done…
The Trump administration has instructed states that they must “immediately undo any steps” that were taken to provide full SNAP benefits to low-income Americans, saying states were “unauthorized.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in a late-night Saturday memo obtained by CBS News, also threatened to impose financial penalties on states that did not comply with the government’s new orders.
“To the extent States sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized,” Patrick Penn, deputy undersecretary of Agriculture, wrote to state SNAP directors. “Accordingly, States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025.”
What a colossal mess.
And the fact that this crisis has erupted just before Thanksgiving is making a lot of recipients even more upset…
“Nothing, I didn’t get nothing this month,” Anthony Miller said.
Miller said he was supposed to see nearly $300 on his link card on November 1.
“It’s confusing and Trump don’t want to release it, and that’s why he’s taking it to court, and it don’t make no sense at all that we got to starve out here, and he did it at the time of Thanksgiving,” he said.
Did you notice that he used the word “starve”.
We are suddenly hearing that word at lot.
In fact, one female EBT recipient that claims that she is “starving” has been getting a tremendous amount of attention online…https://www.youtube.com/embed/pm99ugfnkAA?si=NKkS-JGCIAne6DjX
Needless to say, that woman is not starving.
If you go without food for a few days, that is not going to hurt you.
In fact, for most of the population going without food for a few days would actually be quite beneficial for their health.
If you have a chronic disease, fasting is one of the best things that you could possibly do for your body.
The reason why we are hearing the word “starve” so much is because the mainstream media is constantly using it and many top Democrats are constantly using it…
“Donald Trump and his administration have made the decision to weaponize hunger, to withhold SNAP benefits from millions of people, notwithstanding the fact that two lower courts, both the district court and the court of appeals, made clear that those SNAP benefits needed to be paid immediately,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said on CNN Saturday, calling the actions “shameful.”
“Donald Trump is literally fighting in court to ensure Americans starve. HE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOU,” echoed California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, on X.
Nobody in the United States is starving.
If you want to see real starvation, just look at what is happening in Africa right now.
People are literally dropping dead from a lack of food, but that hardly gets any attention from the western media.
So let’s put all of this into perspective.
This food stamp crisis is just temporary, and the good news is that it looks like a deal to end the government shutdown may be within reach.
We shall see.
But even if this government shutdown ends, there are a couple of things that we all need to remember.
Number one, demand at U.S. food banks was at record levels even before the government shutdown started.
Number two, if there is some sort of a major emergency someday and the federal government is no longer able to feed tens of millions of Americans, things will get very bad in this country very rapidly.
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will remain on hold until Democrats reopen the federal government, blasting Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his radical left allies for deliberately prolonging the shutdown to score political points.
Trump made the announcement on Truth Social, writing:
SNAP BENEFITS, which increased by Billions and Billions of Dollars (MANY FOLD!) during Crooked Joe Biden’s disastrous term in office (Due to the fact that they were haphazardly “handed” to anyone for the asking, as opposed to just those in need, which is the purpose of SNAP!), will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT
The government shutdown, now entering its fifth week, has become a political standoff between President Trump, who insists on fiscal responsibility and border enforcement, and Senate Democrats, who refuse to pass a clean funding bill without billions in additional welfare spending and carveouts for illegal immigrants.
Trump allies say Democrats are using SNAP recipients as pawns, deliberately blocking appropriations to create headlines blaming the administration for hunger, while ignoring the reality that SNAP spending exploded by nearly 40% under Biden due to loose eligibility standards and rampant fraud.
Conservative have long warned that Biden’s reckless expansion of food stamp eligibility allowed millions of noncitizens and unverified applicants to receive benefits intended for low-income American families.
Earlier this week, two Obama-appointed federal judges ordered the Trump administration to tap emergency contingency funds to partially pay November benefits.
Now, thanks to court mandates, only $4.65 billion remains, enough to cover half of the amount owed to current SNAP recipients for November.
USDA officials had explored alternative options, including borrowing from Child Nutrition funds, the account that feeds 29 million schoolchildren every day, but concluded such a move would devastate the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs.
However, President Trump isn’t backing down. Until the Democrats agree to end the shutdown they created, SNAP benefits will remain frozen.
Do you want the good news or the bad news first? The good news is that 50 percent of food stamp benefits will be paid out during the month of November. The bad news is that a lot of food stamp recipients are still extremely angry. Food stamp protests are already starting to happen, videos are being posted on social media that show people how to take groceries right out the front door of a Walmart, and one woman is claiming that “everyone was stealing” when she visited her local grocery store. Of course if you live in an area where food stamp use is very low, conditions may seem perfectly normal. It just depends on where you live. Hopefully the government shutdown will be resolved very soon, because if we get to a point where no more food stamp money is coming from Washington at all things could get really crazy.
In a declaration submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, Patrick Penn, a Department of Agriculture official who oversees SNAP, said the administration “intends to deplete SNAP contingency funds completely and provide reduced SNAP benefits for November 2025.”
There is roughly $4.6 billion in the contingency fund that can be used to cover November benefit payments, according to Penn. Officials have said fully covering those benefits would require roughly $9 billion. The $4.6 billion will be used to “cover 50% of eligible households’ current allotments,” Penn said.
Will this be enough to stop widespread rioting and looting from breaking out this month?
If food stamp recipients start receiving some money, that could help settle things down. Unfortunately, we are being warned that it may take some states “weeks” or even “months” to distribute reduced benefit amounts…
In his declaration with the court in Rhode Island, USDA official Patrick Penn said that getting SNAP benefits into the hands of recipients could face delays, since states will have to rework their systems to provide partial payments.
“Given the variation among State systems, some of which are decades old, it is unclear how many States will complete the changes in an automated manner with minimal disruption versus manual overrides or computations that could lead to payment errors and significant delays,” Penn wrote.
He added: “For at least some States, USDA’s understanding is that the system changes States must implement to provide the reduced benefit amounts will take anywhere from a few weeks to up to several months.”
This is yet another example of how incompetent government agencies have become.
How long does it take to calculate a 50 percent reduction in benefits?
This isn’t exactly rocket science.
There could be millions of food stamp recipients that have to wait for an extended period of time for their reduced November benefits, and that certainly isn’t going to make them very happy.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has told grocery stores not to give special discounts to around 42 million Americans who use food stamps.
An email sent by the department to stores, posted on X by Catherine Rampell, co-host of MSNBC’s The Weekend, said: “You cannot treat SNAP-EBT customers differently than any other customer.”
Was that really necessary?
There are a lot of people out there that are really hurting right now.
Yes, it is certainly true that there are some that choose to abuse the system.
For example, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins just admitted that thousands upon thousands of people have been illegally using food stamps…
“We have found thousands and thousands of illegal use of the EBT card, we have been moving people off of SNAP, we’ve got about 700,000 people that we’ve moved off SNAP since the president took office, and we’ve arrested about 118 people,” Rollins said.
She added that investigators also discovered about 5,000 dead people who were still receiving benefits.
There should be consequences for abusing the system.
I think that is something that we should all be able to agree on.
I have no idea how she is able to get that much money.
Is she telling the government that she has 12 kids or something?
People like that ruin the system for everyone else.
There really are millions of Americans that do not have enough food to eat every month, and the food stamp program is an important lifeline for them.
Unfortunately for them, it does not appear that this government shutdown is going to end any time soon.
During an interview with CBS News, President Trump explained that the government shutdown will finally end when the Democrats decide to give up…
“I’m not going to do it by being extorted by the Democrats who have lost their way,” Mr. Trump said. “There’s something wrong with these people.”
Mr. Trump said he believes that Democrats will eventually capitulate and vote to end the shutdown.
“And if they don’t vote, that’s their problem,” he said.
I don’t think that the Democrats are going to give up for quite a while.
I think that the Democrats feel like they have an opportunity to turn the political mood in this country in their favor.
So for now, millions of food stamp recipients will just have to stretch their meals as far as they can…
Christophe Niyibizi, 67, said he and his wife had begun limiting themselves to one full meal each day, in midafternoon, to try and make their food last longer. After spending $14 on Saturday for a few groceries, he had $83 remaining — and no way of knowing if his next monthly benefit would show up as scheduled in 10 days.
Placing his small grocery bag into his car, Mr. Niyibizi shrugged and smiled when asked if he felt hungry. A U.S. citizen who immigrated to the United States from the Democratic Republic of the Congo a dozen years ago, he recalled how he had prayed, while still in Africa, that he would make it to America one day.
“This country is a good country, 100 percent,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve had this problem.”
If we get to Thanksgiving and the government shutdown has not ended, I think that things could get really wild.
But it doesn’t have to get to that stage.
If our politicians in Washington can work things out, we could potentially avoid a scenario in which we see widespread rioting and looting.
The level of anger among America’s impoverished masses is rising very quickly, and if it rises high enough we could see a very frightening explosion.
Two activist judges appointed by Barack Obama have forced the Trump administration to dip into emergency contingency funds to partially cover SNAP benefits for millions of Americans caught in the crossfire of the ongoing “Schumer Shutdown.”
This blatant interference from the bench underscores the deep-state sabotage that’s been plaguing President Trump’s second term from day one, as radical Democrats led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer hold the nation’s budget hostage.
The shutdown was entirely avoidable. President Trump and House Republicans put forward a clean funding bill that prioritized border security, military readiness, and tax relief for hardworking families.
But Schumer and his band of obstructionists in the Senate refused to budge, insisting on billions more for their pet projects like funding illegal immigrants’ healthcare.
On Friday, two Obama judges, John McConnell in Providence and Indira Talwani in Boston, ruled that the Trump administration must use available contingency funds to continue SNAP benefits despite the shutdown.
The judgment came in response to lawsuits filed by Democrat‐led states, cities, and non‐profits arguing that halting benefits would cause irreparable harm to tens of millions of Americans.
According to a sworn declaration filed in federal court by Patrick A. Penn, Deputy Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services,the USDA was compelled by district court orders out of Massachusetts and Rhode Island to “deplete SNAP contingency funds completely.”
The filing reveals that the USDA began FY2026 with roughly $6 billion in contingency funds, much of which was already spent on administrative costs and nutrition block grants for Puerto Rico and American Samoa.
Now, thanks to court mandates, only $4.65 billion remains, enough to pay half of what is owed to current SNAP recipients for November.
USDA officials had explored alternative options, including borrowing from Child Nutrition funds, the account that feeds 29 million schoolchildren every day, but concluded such a move would devastate the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs.
While Democrats and activist judges continue to play politics with America’s food programs, the Trump Administration is being forced, by judicial decree, to spend emergency funds meant for disasters and new applicants just to keep benefits flowing during a shutdown Democrats caused.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that USDA Sec. Brooke Rollins said her team has reviewed $100 billion in SNAP spending and already identified widespread abuse and criminal activity.
“We have found, after studying about $100 billion in spending, thousands and thousands of illegal uses of the EBT card. We have been moving people off of SNAP. We’ve got almost 700,000 people, I think, that we’ve moved off just since the President took office. We’ve arrested about 118 people. So this has been ongoing.”
Massive fraud has been taking place in the US government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), including benefits being paid to illegal aliens, according to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.
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In an interview with Fox News, Rollins described the program as “broken and corrupt” after funding lapsed at the weekend because of the ongoing government shutdown.
Rollins said that 21 states refused to hand over data to the Department of Government Efficiency regarding whether illegal aliens were claiming SNAP benefits fraudulently. Two states sued the USDA.
In hundreds of billions of dollars of spending, thousands of cases of illegal benefit were detected, Rollins added, over a hundred people have been arrested and thousands of dead people were still receiving benefits.
On my first day @USDA, we told every state to send us their SNAP data so we could make sure illegal immigrants aren’t getting benefits meant for American families. 29 states stepped up. 21 blue states refused — and two SUED US FOR ASKING! 🤦🏻♀️
She also linked the massive growth of SNAP under the Biden administration—the program almost doubled in size in 2023—to attempts to “buy the election.”
“It’s time to drastically reform this program,” Rollins said, “so that we can make sure those who are truly needy, truly vulnerable are getting what they need, and the rest of the corruption goes away and we can serve the American taxpayer.”
SNAP covers around 42 million people from low-income households, giving an average of $187.20 per month to be spent on food. The program is administered by the US Department of Agriculture.
SNAP benefits are provided through accounts called EBTs. Beneficiaries spend the food stamps using EBT cards, which are like prepaid credit cards. Benefits are provided on a certain day each month.
“Millions of Americans, as of tomorrow, will no longer receive SNAP,” USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins told a briefing in Washington on Friday. The pause, which came into effect at the weekend, is the first in the program’s history since it was implemented in 1964.
Funding for the program has stalled since the beginning of last month. Democrats have voted against reopening the government on more than a dozen occasions, and Republicans have voted to prevent funding for SNAP while a broader agreement on ending the shutdown is reached.
On Friday, a US district judge ruled that the USDA must use $5 billion in contingency funding to pay for SNAP; although this amount is just over half the $9 billion monthly cost of the program.
In a post on social media following the decision, President Trump said he had instructed lawyers to ask federal courts what could be done to ensure SNAP is funded.
“I do NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT,” Trump wrote.
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